FROM THE ARCHIVES - April 16th 1953:Following the debacle over the Mother and Child scheme, which brought down the inter-party government in 1951, the new Fianna Fáil government introduced another health Bill two years later which planned to extend free services to the needy as well as to all those on social insurance earning less than £600 a year and to smaller farmers. It was vigorously opposed by the medical profession and by Fine Gael's leader in the Dáil, John A Costello. –
MR J. A. Costello (F.G.) said in the Dáil last night that his Party was opposed to the whole principle of the new Health Bill. He condemned the measure as being unjust to the £600 a year worker, and said that he would fight it by every constitutional means. The Bill was fraudulent in its conception. They were opposed to the Money Resolution because they had fundamental objections in principle. They did not base their objections so much on cost as on principle. They would not hesitate to support a scheme which would cost £10,000,000 if they were satisfied there was going to be an adequate return, either to the recipients of benefits, or to the health of the community as a whole. They believed that there would be no return whatever for the heavy expenditure which would be involved in the scheme.
Further, Mr. Costello said that they were opposed to the scheme because the propaganda by which it had tried “to be sold to the public” was put forward as offering a number of benefits to the recipients which, in fact, it did not contain. They were opposed to it because it was unjust to the middle classes and because it bore on its face the marks of official conception and design and every internal evidence that no experienced professional mind was brought to bear upon the construction of the scheme.
They were opposed to it because it was merely an extension of the dispensary service, merely an extension of the public assistance service to a greater number of people and different classes, and because, based as it was on that dispensary system which was the product of an alien administration in this country and which was the forerunner of Socialist medicine, the proposals in the Bill were merely an enlargement of State medicine and a forerunner of State medicine in this country.
They were opposed to it because of the proposals with reference to the contribution of £1 to entitle people, who were not within the classes named in the bill, to come within its scope: because that £1 contribution, masquerading as it was as something in the nature of an actuarial calculation or an insurance contribution, was merely a fraudulent subterfuge to get over a moral objection which was put forward to the free-for-all scheme.
They were against the Bill because it was unworkable. They believed it was intended never to be worked.The Bill, Mr. Costello added, was contrary to the best interests of the community, and contrary even to the best interests of those whom it was designed to benefit.
Mr Costello asked could they not at least agree on two propositions of principle. Could they not agree, first, that everybody had realised by now that it was nothing but fraudulent pretence to suggest that there was any such thing as a free service for any section of the community, and that public opinion became vocal when the Minister announced that he was going to put a heavy burden on the ratepayers to defray the cost of the scheme? Could they not have it recognised also, frankly and honestly, that every section of the House stood for the principle that no citizen was going to be deprived of all necessary medical, surgical and nursing attention and appliances merely because of lack of means? Having accepted those two principles, could they not approach with some degree of calmness the solution of the national health problem?
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